Part 8

Typ got chronic indigestion from scrapping over the price of his dejeuner, and Mrs. Typ swore regularly every morning that she’d see the buccaneers in the sixteenth sub-basement of Gehenna before she’d pay 18 cents for two measley boiled eggs—then she’d go ahead and order them.

Their daily sight-seeing and shopping excursions in all foreign countries were continually marred by the petty pilferings and short-change manoeuvering of foreign highbinders, and many a night as they sat fingering their finances in the hotel lobby and adding up how much they had squandered during the day, they would discover where they had been bilked of anywhere from seventy-five cents to one dollarr and a quarterrrrrr besides finding among their small change a worthless Portuguese coin that some low-down dragoman had handed them instead of a piastre.

When Typ and Mrs. Typ returned to America at the end of the year fagged to a frazzle and pining for just one peep at the Land of the Free and the home of the Oil Trust, their joy knew no anchor. They could hardly wait for their ship to bring them in sight of the Lady of Liberty and they pedaled the deck like jailed jaguars and Typ smoked cigar after cigar and spit over the deck-rail in wild abandon.

At last they arrived at New York and were so anxious to set feet on terry firmy that their eagerness carried them down the gang-plank before the Veterinary had come Aboard, and so they ran up against a Minion of the Law who gave them a call that reverberated for miles along the Palisades and made the Goddess of Liberty almost spill her torch. Whereupon they both got crimson back of their large ears and apologized profusely and stepped all over each other getting back into line where they crouched for seven hours without moving a muscle of the map.

Before the day was wholly gone, they were permitted to go into the Customs House, and the Inspector told them to open all baggage, and they said Yessir and got busy with the keys, and for the next hour-and-a-half were bowing and bending over 18 boxes and bags, and pulling things apart and trying their very doggondest to prove that they were on the level.

When they had at last begun to feel that they had proved their innocence, the Inspector, with his arm dug shoulder-deep in the last of the trunks, fished up a pill-box and all bets were off again until he had opened it and shaken the pills out and run his finger-nail around the crevices and turned it upside down and inside out, and put it to his ear and smelled it and trained an X-Ray machine on it, and then declared everything was all right and they could depart in peace.

Thanking the Inspector for his interest, and with a sigh of relief that was full of humility and unshed tears, they got a couple of porters to wheel their stuff out to a Taxi, and in the fullness of a swift joy that came upon them when they got outside and sniffed the free American winter air, they gave the two portering gentlemen a crisp dollar bill for the service.

Whereupon the gentlemen looked at the bill like it was some kind of curiosity, then looked at each other and groaned, and then gave the givers a look that scared them to a pope’s purple and made them finger further with the purse-string until the gentlemen had grunted their approval and departed.

When they arrived at their hotel they found they had only a couple of hundred dollars to pay the taxi fare with, but they managed to get by with it without inciting any murderous thought in the breast of the driver, and went in and registered.

When they informed the Room Clerk that they had not made any reservations he said he was sorry but everything was taken except one room without bath adjoining the boiler-house which was being held for a certain gentleman who had wired for it several months ago. Then King Klerk tapped his fingers on the desk and looked boredly out beyond their square heads and repeated that he was sorry.

At this, Mr. and Mrs. Typ got down on their knees and said the Litany, and the room clerk thawed and told them they could have the room for $20 a day if they barked quick. They barked. They also thanked him from the bottom of their grateful American hearts and told him whenever he came to their town to look them up.

When they had squeezed into their little ingrowing room they found that it had only one window, and that was an opening in the ceiling about the size of a silver dollar, but fifty times the value. They also found the porters hanging around for a tip and forgot that it was the custom at home to fee the beetles a quarter every time they did something instead of giving the whole bunch a couple of shillings at the end of a week’s work. They apologized for this oversight and then settled down for a little rest.

The temperature of the room was between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit and Mr. Typ began to sweat like a brewery horse and got up to pull off his coat, but found the room was too cramped to do it and so he took off his necktie instead.

About the time that their eyes were beginning to hang out on their cheek-bones with the heat, and their ears were ringing like a Broadway New Year’s eve celebration, they managed to throw off the approaching comatose and back out of the room and down to the restaurant for lunch.

The head waiter said all the tables were full but if they didn’t mind sitting outside for a couple of weeks he would see what he could do. They said “Oh-that’s-all-right” and thanked him very kindly and gave him a Dollar Bill and sat down outside the door and tried to look as if they didn’t mind it at all. They didn’t want to give the Head Waiter the slightest suspicion that they were inconvenienced and run the risk of his getting sore at them and shutting them off altogether from the privilege of eating in the restaurant which he didn’t own.

During the same epoch they managed to get a little table facing the wall and a pillar, and were soon rummaging through the Feed Folder for some dish that they could afford to buy without becoming insolvent. They finally took refuge in the haven of all who don’t know what they want, and after they had eaten the last scrap of the roast beef they quietly paid the eleven-dollar check and went out to find the bank.

The next day they took a train for their home, and were so accustomed to foreign compartment cars that they decided to get a compartment. But when they found out the price, they concluded to buy a motor car instead and compromised on a berth in the main dormitory. There were no lowers to be had, and so they thanked the Pullman Conductor and took an upper.

The car seemed a trifle like a dry-kiln in temperature and they asked the porter if he would mind introducing a little outside atmosphere. He looked at the thermomenter and said it was only 190 degrees in the car and that the rules of the company forbade him from opening any more air-holes unless it got up to 3,000 degrees. They thanked the porter for the trouble they had caused him and asked him how all the folks were and bade him good-night and crawled up the ladder and disappeared back of the curtains, and were soon wrapped in the arms of Morph.

A week after they had arrived home, and had told everybody how glad they were to get back to God’s Country, the Cost of living began to show unusual agility in the high jump. The trial heats had caused people to gasp, but when the finals came on, everybody became highly excited and ran to and fro wondering what was coming next in way of sensation.

Mr. and Mrs. Typical American, with their originality of brain convolutions, decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to teach the people how to starve. And so they organized a Gradual Starvation Class and secured many other Typical Americans as pupils and thanked God that through his bounty, the people did not have to do the job suddenly, but could dwindle away slowly and almost painlessly.

They were getting on Very Well until a certain few Americans—not in any sense typical—came out in the open here and there, and said: “Not by a damsight! With grainaries groaning with unused grain, with eggs piled Babel-high in gigantic warehouses, with cotton enough in one State to clothe the whole Nation in summer, and wool enough on the backs of one-tenth of the sheep of the country to clothe the whole Nation in winter, with banks bursting with gold and freight cars enough to move the wares of the planet when not cornered in the holy cause of Pillage—not by a damsight will America starve herself to make a few Rich richer!”

And so it came to pass that these voices crying in the wilderness jarred loose in time the sluggish national contentment of Mr. and Mrs. Typ and other Americans everywhere, and made them think.

But just when they began to think, it was time for them to go Abroad again.

HOT SKETCH NO. 23

WHEN MENTAL LEECH MEETS MENTAL LEECH

THERE was a temperamental manufacturer who used to come down to the office after a thick night in the Loop and unleash a long low growl about the lack of Initiative among his men.

“There isn’t a kanoop among them,” he said, “that has the originality of a tadpole.”

On a certain day, not unlike any other day in this particular establishment, the Sales Manager poked his nose gradually into the Boss’s office, and, sniffing the Boss within, squeezed cautiously into the room, scraping the nap all off his courage as he did so.

“Will you please be so kind as to tell me,” whispered the Sales Manager, “if this little ginger-up letter to the Road Rats meets your approval?”

The Boss grabbed the letter, shot a lightning glance at it upside-down, and rammed it back into the Sales Manager’s hands.

“Rotten!” he said, “Lacks originality—pep! No punch in it!”

“Thank you,” replied the Sales Manager mildly. “I’ll see if I can not embody some of the points of your constructive criticism.” And he oozed out of the room again.

In came the Advertising Manager, walking on his ankles so as to not make any riotous disturbance.

“I was just thinking—” he began.

“Impossible!” sneered His Gentle Bosslets, putting his heels up on his glass-topped desk and lighting his eighty-seventh cigarette since breakfast.

“I was just thinking,” continued the Adv. Mgr. affecting to ignore the suggestion but failing miserably from the knees down, “I was just thinking that maybe it might not be a bad plan, perhaps, to paint New York next month, please.”

“NEVER!” roared the Boss. “Never in a thousand years. The painted bulletin is no good—never was. Poster’s the thing! I’d rather post New York for one month than paint it for forty years at half the price.”

“Very good, then—shall I go in for that?”

“Not on your life. I’ve just decided on a newspaper campaign.”

“Thank you,” said the Adv. Mgr., backing out of the room and falling over a few chairs and things on the fairway.

When the intruder had vanished, Commander Boss got up, ran his long temperamental digits through his top-fringe and pounded out into the manufacturing department where he proceeded to raise from fourteen to sixteen separate and distinct kinds of scarlet hell for the general lack of initiative and commonsense around his plant.

Things went on in this happy homelike fashion until one fine warm Spring day when Brigadier Boss up and booted the whole bunch of bungling department heads into the great Out of Doors and set about to effect a re-organization.

“What I want is men who do THEIR OWN thinking,” he said, and he began telephoning and writing and wiring and advertising all over the country for A-1 Initiativers.

In due time he got them and called them all into his office and passed the cigars and explained how he wanted each man to run his own Department just as if it was his own business, exercising merely ordinary judgment and commonsense.

Then he went on to tell them how the old herd had always passed the old buck to him, never doing anything unless they were told, fearing even to set down the total of a column of figures without first consulting him, and he wound up with a few Well Chosen remarks about Co-operation and Co-ordination and the old reliable shoulder-to-the-wheel stuff.

Everybody was happy and talky and full of pep and chest-out chatter, for be it remembered that each new Department Head was an Individual and not a Person, and could hold his own with the best bullers of bulldom.

And so they all adjourned to their respective stalls and started in their new work with enthusiasm, energy and enterprise, and any other snapful word that you could think of beginning with “e.”

Things went great and glorious for about a month when the Boss discovered that the new Superintendent had put in a lot of machinery in the manufacturing department that he did not approve of, and he proceeded to give the Supe a double-nutted Call Down that carried to Columbus, Ohio.

The Supe came back not unstrengthfully whereupon the Boss’s eyes flashed like a Zeppelin night-searcher, and the Supe remembering that he had seventeen children and a motorcycle to support, cooled down almost to a solid, and let the Boss rave on like a knight of Montana overcharged by a cabman.

Shortly after this explosion in the factory the Boss happened into the Sales Manager’s throbbing little office, and in the course of a high-spirited but not dangerous discussion on things in general he discovered that the S. M. had re-districted the whole territory and changed agencies right and left and down the middle.

Whereupon Major General Boss let out a roar that shook the business mottoes from the walls and sent the stenographer scurrying to the south gate. Everything he could think of off-hand he called the Sales Manager, and then proceeded to look up a few choice ones in the Dock Hands’ Ready Vocabulary.

At this, the Sales Manager doubled his fists and closed his eyes to an ominous squint, and was all ready to spring—when he happened to think of the monthly installment on his Victrola, and so he dropped into his chair and sat numb and dumb, and then some.

On his way out, the Boss chanced to see the Advertising Manager pouring over a dummy on his desk.

“What’s that bum thing?” growled Doc Boss, pointing his long presidential finger toward the busy little desk.

“Why that’s the layout for a broadside that I’m mailing to the Dealer Trade on our new No. 7’s,” replied the Advertising Manager, smiling.

“No good—no good in the world!” came back Uncle Boss. “Nobody on earth would stop to read that thing. Too big—too unwieldy—copy too scattered—weak copy, too—might just as well mail out a sheet of white paper! A clumsy folder like that, gets in with the second-class matter and goes the route of the wastebasket. Nothing to it!”

“What you want,” continued the Boss, rising in temperature, “is a snappy little envelope insert like this—” And he grabbed up a small piece of paper and folded it angrily and shook it before the surprised eyes of the new Adv. Mgr.

Whereupon, without waiting for further reasoning or retort, Captain Boss withdrew, leaving the puzzled Adv. Mgr. to ponder over the punk suggestion. “Perhaps he’s right after all,” he reflected.

A few days later Colonel Boss wandered into the Advertising Manager’s office again.

“What’s this dinky little thing?” he inquired, picking up a dummy that the Adv. Mgr. had on his desk.

“Why that’s just a little insert I’m getting ready to send out to the Dealer Trade on our new No. 7’s.”

“Holy Smoke!” ejaculated Commodore Boss, “how do you expect us to get by with our No. 7’s on that measley little thing. What you want is a smashing broadside—something big enough for a fellow to see without impairing his eyesight—something that will command attention—something that will—”

“Hold on!” broke in the Adv. Mgr., rising from his warm chair and looking kind of doggone determined. “Last week I had a broadside underway and you came in here and ordered it off, and said you wanted an insert. You now come in and rap the insert and say you want a broadside.”

“Oh, hell,” cut in Premier Boss, “don’t pay any attention to what I say.”

“I’m not going to,” flashed back the now thoroughly aroused Adv. Mgr., “but YOU are going to pay attention to what I say, and you’re going to remember it the longest day you live.”

“When I came here,” he continued, sticking his fist right up close to the Boss’s olfactory knob, “you told me that your old organization was a bunch of dummies and said you wanted initiative. You SAID it, but you did not MEAN it. _You_ don’t want initiative and independent thinking. You want weakness and sycophancy.

“You could not stand a strong mind in your establishment six months. There would be a constant clash for mental supremacy. THE OLD MEN THAT YOU CANNED ALL HAD WILL POWER OF THEIR OWN ONCE. But you sapped their wills to feed your own rotten gourmand Will. And when they had no more mental pap to give you, you despised them. You despised them for lack of the very thing you robbed them of.

“You are a Mental Leech—the most dangerous class of citizen in the world. And when it so happens that your stripe is an employer, your sin is doubly damnable because the mental resistance of the average employe is weakened against your onslaught through the fear he has of losing his job.

“I’ll concede that you have never before been CONSCIOUS of what you were doing,” roared the Adv. Mgr, “but from this moment you _shall_ be conscious of it, and of your responsibility if you dare ever again to use it—you big blustering mental bully you!”

“You’re fired,” interrupted the Boss in a flannel voice and plainly whipped.

“I decline to quit!” thundered the Advertising Manager.

“All right then, STAY!” said the Boss with a sudden calmness. “We can get along together. _We are onto each other._”

HOT SKETCH NO. 24

THE EXPORT GROUP GRAFTER

ON A crisp and crackling December morn, a Jones Farm sausage with a big cigar and deep-dish collar of four-flusher fur, swished into the office of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., Manufacturers.

He took out a race-track amplifier and announced that he was about to make a trip all the way to Europe in the interest of a group of Non Competitive manufacturers and would be pleased to let one other Representative Firm in on this satin-faced opportunity.

Now the office of Messrs Eazley Skinned & Co., was a placid, tooth-picking sort of a place. The business had been passed down the aisle from sire to son so many times that it had begun to wear slick in spots like the plush seat of the collection box. The whole place breathed of Longtime Service but very little business. Whenever the door opened every bucolic head in the room turned toward it like a Grammar School class.

The sudden announcement, therefore, that somebody was about to proceed on a hazardous journey to a far-off place like Europe created no little stir in this hive of hustle. We do not mean by this that it unleashed as much excitement as an Order would have done, or a Wall Street Bomb. But it was sufficient to start every pair of eyes forward from their bushings including those shrewd gray see-ers of Mr. Eazley Skinned himself.

The breezy visitor was immediately ushered into the private office of Mr. E. Skinned who put on his coat and reached for the trusty box of 5-scenters, calling meanwhile to the other shirt-sleeved Executives who came filing in. Soon every chair was tilted back comfortably and the fumes of the hemp panetella rent the air, so to speak. The show was about to commence.

“Gentlemen,” began the Weenie with the Collar, “the trip I am about to make will cover _all_ of Europe.” He paused to let it sink in. Ernie Shackleton could not have done more.

“And the group of manufacturers I shall represent will have my Undivided Attention. I shall represent _only_ the interests of the firms who are fortunate enough to sign up with me, and no other firm in America will be able to induce me to give them one single bit of trade information, no matter how many tears they shed.”

At this juncture nobody in the meeting thought to ask His Fur Collar how many firms he intended to represent. So he didn’t volunteer the information that he was out for a neat total anywhere from 40 and 4,000.

Then spoke up the President in an inquiring crescendo. “Just what cities, or whatever you call them over there, do you intend to visit?” he asked.

“Every metropolis in Europe,” flashed back the intrepid explorer as he began spreading a map of South Africa out over the desk, tracing with a pencil the various points he would touch on his daring expedition provided the domestic touch proved good enough to enable him to do so.

“I will sail from New York here (pointing to Cape Town) on the Acquatoonia on January 1st and my passage alone will cost me $350.00 for a 7-day trip or $50.00 a day before I even get to London. There it will cost me anywheres from $25.00 to $30.00 a day at the _Sav_-voy without counting Roast Lamb from the push-cart at Simpson’s which I understand is listing somewhat and from there I will cross the Channel to Paris and the channel trip alone will cost me $75.00 easily, and the tipping in Paris is fierce since the War.”

Here the coherent and logical trade commissioner was again not interrupted by anybody asking him if he had ever been in any of these places before, or had ever sold goods anywhere else on the face of the earth. So he very sensibly kept still on these points and continued to talk about the fierce expenses at every town he proposed to back into.

If any of his discriminating hearers at any time during the informing Foreign Trade discourse were interested enough in their own financial welfare to go through the enervating ordeal of dropping their chairs forward a few inches to take a look at his old bluff-map, he was not aware of it. Nor did any of them appear to wish to interrupt his forceful and lucid presentation of his program by asking him How About Orders or any other irrelevant thing like that.

They all merely puffed the old cabbagio, chins up and eyes on ceiling, and swung their legs as they watched the smoke rings float away from the bunk. Mr. Eazley Skinned broke in at one stage to tell about the big tips that Mrs. Eastbrook and her husband Jim Eastbrook said it cost them that time when they went to Euripp.

Things were coming along great and grand for the Bright Lad with the Grab Bag; so of his own accord he continued to elaborate his story. He told how he would distribute their catalogues and Price Lists wherever he went, and make regular monthly reports, and he explained how all orders that would flock in from the New York Export Houses would naturally be the result of his efforts and how the factory was to simply credit him with the commission on each shipment since he wouldn’t have time to always check up, being so busy selling goods all the time and so forth.

The Boss of the works here ventured to inquire how much that commission was going to be, and the Wise Gink modestly said 5% because he was leading up to something else. The Boss said 5% was fair enough and all whiskers around the room nodded affirmatively.

“Now then,” said the Dominating Personality as he came pounding down the final stretch, “in order to help defray a part of my expenses each manufacturer will be asked to pay $500.00, and in order to avoid the delays and expense of remitting, this amount will be paid by each one in advance.”

At this every tilted chair around the room suddenly and concertedly hit on all four cylinders and a few hep coughs and sideglances were exchanged, but there was no show of disapproval—merely surprise.

Observing this, the Globe Trotter jumped right into the breach fur collar and all, and began telling them all once more about the fierce expenses and explaining how he himself was going to stand 50% of the cost of the trip while the firms he represented would only be stuck with 50% all bunched together.